IJE Advance Access originally published online on July 11, 2008
International Journal of Epidemiology 2008 37(5):1179-1180; doi:10.1093/ije/dyn126
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2008; all rights reserved.
Commentary: Clustering in Down syndrome
Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6BQ, UK. E-mail: j.k.morris@qmul.ac.uk
Accepted 3 June 2008
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
The risk of having a Down syndrome pregnancy is highly associated with a mother's age. There have been many publications proposing different mathematical models to describe this association using the prevalence of Down syndrome in different populations from countries including America, Canada, Australia, the UK, Belgium, Sweden1 and Russia2 (personal communication) from 1958 to 2004. Although the mathematical models vary, it is striking how similar the underlying observed prevalence is according to maternal age. For